Before 1897, Royston was one town in two counties!

Final Artwork

Artwork process

The thing about doing historically inspired art is that you learn way more than the piece can ever truly cover. Thus, I am apparently now a veritable fount of knowledge about Royston’s Manor House. So much so that I was invited to work on a book about the story of the Manor House with the local historical society.

Obviously the book needed illustrations and images (or maybe I just wanted another excuse to paint, but I’ll never tell!) so more historical art was born.

This piece was done to represent Royston’s move to Hertfordshrie. I know what you’re thinking, how can a whole town move? Well first, let’s talk about how one town can exist in two different counties with the border line running straight through the middle of the town! If you lived north of Melbourn St you lived in Cambridgeshire, but if you lived south of Melbourn Street then you were from Herts. I’d love to see where they’d have put the “Welcome to Cambridgeshire/Hertfordshire” signs in those days.

Finally, around 1896/7 some bright spark decided to unify the town and for reasons I’m not sure of Cambridgeshire kicked us out and Hertfordshire welcomed us all with open arms... ok, ok, so maybe it wasn’t that dramatic but if I don’t think of history in dramatic terms then where’s the fun in it? Amateur dramatics aside, this painting is my interpretation in that change of counties.